Detective Shaw’s London: Notting Hill

Located in north-western London and almost completely crossed by Portobello Road, Notting Hill is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating and famous districts of the British capital. It’s no coincidence that it is the location of numerous novels and films. Among the latter, the best known is undoubtedly the 1999 romantic comedy that bears the same name of the district (“Notting Hill”) starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts.
It is obviously a tourist destination, but very popular with Londoners too, thanks to the abundance of designer shops, particularly in Westbourne Grove, and the numerous pubs and restaurants.

 

Its most characteristic street is Portobello Road, which with its colourful facades hosts the famous antiques and fresh food market. Here are also some locations used during the Portobello Film Festival, an international independent film festival founded in 1996 where every year more than 700 films are screened for the first time. And moreover, George Orwell lived in this street.

Since 1966, every year in August the district has also been the scene of the Notting Hill Carnival, a real Caribbean costumed party that pours into the streets, attracting millions of people, and which represents one of the biggest street festivals in the world. The event passes through the central part of Westbourne Grove.

As you might guess from the name, Notting Hill stands on a little hill, which reaches its summit in the middle of Ladbroke Grove. However, it has no official boundaries. It is located within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, but is close to the boundary with the City of Westminster, so at a stone’s throw from Paddington train station and not far from many other central London attractions.
But if you don’t want to walk, you can reach one of the five Tube stations inside it: Kensal Green, Westbourne Park, Ladbroke Grove, Latimer Road, and Notting Hill Gate.

What is considered the key area of Notting Hill is North Kensington, characterised by a constant renewal of the population, largely made up of immigrants, which make it one of the most cosmopolitan areas in the world. This is where the most violent acts of the Notting Hill race riots of 1958 took place, but it is also where its carnival began and where most of the scenes in the film starring Grant and Roberts were filmed.

Up until a few years ago, among the numerous and well-known restaurants in Notting Hill there was one in particular: an Italian restaurant called Negozio Classica, even if the name in Italian doesn’t sound good at all, and it’s not clear what it means. It was wedged into a building at the corner of Portobello Road and Westbourne Grove and was characterised by a red facade with shop windows on both walls, from which it was possible to see the inside of the place and its patrons, but several tables were arranged outside, too. More precisely, it was a winery, where, however, you could also eat dishes from Tuscan cuisine.

The restaurant Negozio Classica makes an appearance in the second book of the Detective Eric Shaw Trilogy, “Syndrome” (set in 2016), in a scene where Eric Shaw has lunch with his friend Catherine Foulger and discusses with her some serious facts (mysterious illnesses and an attempted murder) which took place in the St Nicholas Hospital (which in reality does not exist). The dishes mentioned in the scene were actually present on the menu of the restaurant, but the two characters have no way of enjoying them properly, since their conversation leads to an argument. The name of the restaurant is not actually shown in the scene, although its description and location details allow for easy identification. However, it is then mentioned later in the book.

The place used to open at 3.30 p.m., so in theory people didn’t go there precisely to have lunch. In fact, I took an artistic licence here, but the place looked so nice that I really wanted to set a scene there. We also know that Eric is always so absorbed in his work that he often finds himself eating at unconventional hours, when he remembers to do so, so he may have gone there shortly after its opening. Who knows?
I’ve never been to this place, but Eric thinks the food is good. It’s really a shame it doesn’t exist anymore!